The Bentley Continental GTC was booked for its 5 day odyssey - now all that remained was to work out where to go. Obvious targets would be the factories of Ferrari and Lamborghini in Northern Italy. Separated only 20 miles apart they could both be covered in a day. Mike set to work on arranging the necessary. On the way down to Italy we decided to visit a German manufacturer. Mercedes we’d done (I picked up an AMG with Mike from the factory three years ago - excellent trip but another story). So probably Porsche or BMW. Porsche couldn’t do a trip in the right timeframe so BMW it was. A quick visit to the BMW Munich web site and the trip was booked for 5.30pm on a Friday evening.

Channel tunnel tickets were booked for the early morning crossing arriving around 8am in Calais. So the Bentley would have 610 miles to cover in about 9 hours. An average of 68 mph with no stops. Hmmm. The roads better not be as clogged as those in the UK.

Mike returned with mixed news on the Italian front. Ferrari only do tours if you are a)Royalty or b)recommended / accompanied by a UK Ferrari dealer so that meant c) Joe Public can sling their hook and clear off. The only place plebs could visit at Ferrari was their museum ‘Galleria Ferrari’ which was about 1/2 mile from the Factory itself. That would have to do.

Lamborghini, on the other hand, had been happy to arrange a personal tour and were looking forward to meeting us on the Saturday afternoon.

So itinerary looking good, on to sorting out the Bentley for it’s trans european trip. First things were the lights. As Europe drives on the wrong side of the road it would be necessary to adjust the dipped beams so they angle the other way. Surely there would be a switch for this, after all it is called a Continental? Nope. OK, so would beam deflector stickers work? Not really - they don’t function at all well with halogen headlamps. OK, so how do we alter the beams? Bentley have to do it. Fine, it’ll be a bit of pain to bob the car into the showroom to have a guy quickly flick the things over but needs must and we don’t want to break European law now do we? We Brits leave that to the other 26 member states to do.

A quick phone call reveals that it’s not a quick procedure at all. Actually it involves taking off both front side panels of the car and removing the entire headlamp assembly. About 3 hours labour should do it, Oh and about 2 hours labour to switch them back when you come home (no, I don’t know why it takes less time - maybe they leave the side panels off until you come home). Suddenly I felt a lot more in common with our European brethren and decided just to wing it.

OH and forget bringing a spare bulb kit as well. Lights are not driver fixable - Bentley assistance would once more be required. By this point I’d learnt not to ask how much labour would be required…